Glad I got here before the H8rs could talk. His singing sounds the best since since Oh Mercy, he sings the songs that inspired him in his youth very well and has a great band backing him. I think the criticism of this is the same as the criticism for going electric and christian where people wanted to hear him to be play his old material the way that it was recorded in studio, but Bob wanted to take his music in a new direction. The funny thing is that Bob is still playing his classic songs live. While Fallen Angels and Shadows in the Night is no Blood On the Tracks or Highway 61 Revisited, they are still solid and concise albums.

Edit: Christmas album isn't very good

Last edited by goodmeats on Thu March 16th, 2017, 07:24 GMT, edited 1 time in total.

the drive of Dylans art is, what he wants. And if he wants to produce cover albums I´m not crazy and want originals from him. "Shadows" is great, "Angels" is good and "Christmas" sometimes. I do not expect much of Triplicate, but I will buy it because I want to listen to his voice and hope, there´re some good songs on it.

the drive of Dylans art is, what he wants. And if he wants to produce cover albums I´m not crazy and want originals from him. "Shadows" is great, "Angels" is good and "Christmas" sometimes. I do not expect much of Triplicate, but I will buy it because I want to listen to his voice and hope, there´re some good songs on it.

There are a load of good songs on it - let's hope the performances do them justice!

I liked Shadows very much, it had a good through line running with the songs and it felt like a nice, concise collection with the songs that clearly spoke to Bob the most on them. "Lucky Old Sun" is fantastic.

Fallen Angels is one that I'm indifferent about, some nice songs here and there but mostly forgettable and it really does just sound like Shadows outtakes

This is why Triplicate is, sadly, not exciting me in any way.

Who knows, it could be a revelation but I'm not holding out hope if I'm honest

I dreaded Shadows and feared a car crash. What we got instead was an elegant, dignified and utterly cohesive work which didn't outstay its welcome. A wonderful spine with I'm a Fool, Autumn Leaves and TLOS being so good I lose myself in them completely and they feel like Dylan originals and Mod bob classics.The rest I remain consciously aware are covers/"uncovers" but they are largely impressive and in the main delivered with his best vocals since Oh Mercy and possibly before. listening to the album is like being whisked into an old black and white film and the experience is highly satisfying.

Fallen Angels has plenty of charm but lacks the depth and coherence of Shadows. The musicianship is beautiful (with surprising variation from Shadows given it was culled from the same sessions - a lot more emphasis on guitar and Charlie Sexton in particular shines). The vocals aren't quite as reliable as Shadows but overall it's a decent enough effort in a sort of New Morning/ASP kind of way without exactly changing the landscape. Shadows is much stronger and I would have been perfectly happy to have these tracks in Bootleg Series format many moons from now.

Triplicate: The first two tracks I've enjoyed and his vocal if anything sounds slightly stronger than on Shadows/FA. Stardust is a few steps down though and it is a fear that with this quantity of material, there are bound to be further missteps along the way. The concern also lingers that such a large project will lack focus (notwithstanding that the three discs are supposedly individually thematically sequenced) and end up feeling horribly bloated. Compounding that fear is the concern it will all sound terribly jaded given what we've already heard on the two previous albums irrespective of the vocal and band quality hopefully on show. We will see.

The last three albums are the musical equivalent of Lenin's Tomb. The great man embalmed under glass, with the lights carefully adjusted to make his skin tone look natural, while tourists and students on field trips file past respectfully. This is what all those people booing at Newport actually wanted. They just didn't know it yet.

When it came out, Christmas in the Heart was compared to a Bing Crosby or Perry Como Christmas album. But it's more like Bob as Jimmy Durante. He can't really sing these songs, but isn't he adorable?

The last three albums are the musical equivalent of Lenin's Tomb. The great man embalmed under glass, with the lights carefully adjusted to make his skin tone look natural, while tourists and students on field trips file past respectfully. This is what all those people booing at Newport actually wanted. They just didn't know it yet.

When it came out, Christmas in the Heart was compared to a Bing Crosby or Perry Como Christmas album. But it's more like Bob as Jimmy Durante. He can't really sing these songs, but isn't he adorable?

Totally agree with this, with the exception of Ladders In The Tights - that's actually a great album (within the bracket of ModBob's physical decrepitude of course).

The last three albums are the musical equivalent of Lenin's Tomb. The great man embalmed under glass, with the lights carefully adjusted to make his skin tone look natural, while tourists and students on field trips file past respectfully. This is what all those people booing at Newport actually wanted. They just didn't know it yet.

Love. I don't particularly agree, but the strength of your description justifies the opinion.

This latest phase is definitely consistent with Dylan's career-long thing of following his own idiosyncratic muse. Rigorous adherence to his own whims is simultaneously the soul of his genius and his fatal flaw as an artist. He can be both awful and wonderful, sometimes within the same album, sometimes the same song, sometimes the same line. Which is which has not always been clear. I do think SITN's idea was vintage Dylan, utterly unexpected but totally consistent with his aesthetic, logical yet unpredictable, like going electric, like being born again, like life. Of course, so was CITH, a sporadically enjoyable but generally unlistenable novelty. The difference is in execution. SITN was all restraint and nuance. It demanded close attention and comfort with ambiguity from its audience. Those who cared to stick around were treated to Dylan coaxing emotion and meaning from each and every line with a discipline born of necessity given his weakened vocals (though if you ask me, a younger, stronger-voiced Dylan would never have been able to make an album like that work). It was a weird collection of covers that felt substantive as an album of originals. Good originals even. I would have been happy to take FA as equivalent to GAIBTY, overshadowed by its superior conceptual doppelganger but good and worth a listen from time to time. Had he left it at that I would have been fine. Instead, he tripled down in what seems like and may well turn out to be one of the least inspired moves of his career. On the other hand, maybe not. Dylan's twists and turns have a way of justifying themselves in retrospect, or at least arguing for themselves well enough to make you think it over. I will go way out on a limb and wait to judge until I (gasp!) hear the whole album. We'll see if I'm rewarded for my...let's not say loyalty. Say curiosity. Not like it hasn't happened before.

To read what some people write here about Triplicate you'd think a 75 year-old popular entertainer releasing 3 cds worth (less than 90 mins, less time than it takes to watch a crummy football match) of something they don't particularly want to hear is a crime against humanity on a par with those committed by Pol Pot.

My opinion on Shadows in the Night and Fallen Angels is complicated. I find them interesting because Bob wanted to do them. I enjoy the musicality and I'm moved by the obvious care that has been taken. The thing is though, some of the material is pretty mediocre by any standards. We're in "the potency of cheap music" territory here, and edging over the boarder into trite sentimentality or maudlin self-aggrandisement. Now it might be that Dylan feels these, sometimes indifferently, crafted little contraptions, these songs, wonderfully evoke the yearnings, dreams and even quotidian concerns of people as they live their lives and are subjected to "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to" and finds charm, nobility or grandeur, or maybe even magic in them for that reason. I think Dylan is gifted in that he sees no boundary between his art and his life. I think these songs seemed a natural thing to do for him so he just went ahead and did them. I'm looking forward to Triplicate.

This is a point, I didn´t thought about before. I admit, that I don´t know the songs well, I don´t know how many I have heard. What Dylan said about their spirit, that they reflect fate and minds in a hard and special time, could make Triplicate to an unique album. I felt it before when I listened to Shadows... A special relation between music, real feelings and stories, that a musician may only a few times can draw out of his own life. And spontaneous I remembered Blood On The Tracks when I listened to Shadows. Both with strong personal stories but from very different sources. On Shadows and Triplicate no own life – the life of other people. The life of others can enforce humility. Then you (??) probably have to work long and hard with their material and to withdraw your own ambitions... For a musician who needs others experiences for beeing moved by his own music the danger of failure seems high.Anyway, because of Dylan I begin to have an interest for that songs and Lenin opens his eyes.

To read what some people write here about Triplicate you'd think a 75 year-old popular entertainer releasing 3 cds worth (less than 90 mins, less time than it takes to watch a crummy football match) of something they don't particularly want to hear is a crime against humanity on a par with those committed by Pol Pot.

Now it might be that Dylan feels these, sometimes indifferently, crafted little contraptions, these songs, wonderfully evoke the yearnings, dreams and even quotidian concerns of people as they live their lives and are subjected to "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to" and finds charm, nobility or grandeur, or maybe even magic in them for that reason...I think these songs seemed a natural thing to do for him so he just went ahead and did them.

First, ppl are entitled to feel how they feel. I don't think ppl equate their feelings for Triplishit as they would for a ruthless dictator. I do think ppl loathe these covers, and many exaggerate the point bc they'd rather hear Bob do what he does best. He writes lyrics better than he croons. Unfortunately, most of these standards don't vary in instrumentation, vocals, etc. These standards had an orchestra to back what they lacked lyrically. Bob's covers of them lack both. I despise these covers. I'm not looking forward to this new release. His concert performances have gone from energetic to dead since the addition of these songs. However, I think you're spot on in your last paragraph where I quoted you. Although as natural as it was for him, it's sad Bob can't tell when enough is enough. During the summer tour, I met many, disgruntled, fans (young and old) complaining about these covers. Listen to a summer show from 2013 (not even a year for fabulous Dylan shows) and compare it to one from 2016. I don't care how well he supposedly sings these covers, they're wrecking the excitement. Shadows, Fallen, and Triplishit are mundane drivel.

Last edited by Amos on Thu March 16th, 2017, 22:27 GMT, edited 1 time in total.

To read what some people write here about Triplicate you'd think a 75 year-old popular entertainer releasing 3 cds worth (less than 90 mins, less time than it takes to watch a crummy football match) of something they don't particularly want to hear is a crime against humanity on a par with those committed by Pol Pot.

My opinion on Shadows in the Night and Fallen Angels is complicated. I find them interesting because Bob wanted to do them. I enjoy the musicality and I'm moved by the obvious care that has been taken. The thing is though, some of the material is pretty mediocre by any standards. We're in "the potency of cheap music" territory here, and edging over the boarder into trite sentimentality or maudlin self-aggrandisement. Now it might be that Dylan feels these, sometimes indifferently, crafted little contraptions, these songs, wonderfully evoke the yearnings, dreams and even quotidian concerns of people as they live their lives and are subjected to "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to" and finds charm, nobility or grandeur, or maybe even magic in them for that reason. I think Dylan is gifted in that he sees no boundary between his art and his life. I think these songs seemed a natural thing to do for him so he just went ahead and did them. I'm looking forward to Triplicate.

There always a segment of Dylan fans who - because they were moved, or deeply appreciative of his prior artistic output - feel that gives them the wisdom to judge his latest output and possibly provide a public rebuke. Why? Well, one, they don't own it, and two, maybe they want to publicly give Dylan some guidance so that he and everyone else knows what Dylan does well, and where his talents should be directed. They want more of what they like and because it can be outstanding, it means more when Dylan misses the mark to them.

If you help people, don't you find, that most people simply appreciate it, but there are some who resent it when you don't keep helping them.

For me the only sad thing about Triplicate is that there is no chance it will surprise me in any way.

I enjoyed Shadows and Fallen Angels enough, but normally one of the greatest pleasures of a new Dylan release is the unexpected - what will it sound like, what unusual choices will be make, how is it new, what will leave me speechless when I listen to it?

(And even Christmas In The Heart managed this, given before it came out we had no way of knowing what the album would sound like. It was a surprise. It was unexpected)

I know quite a few of the songs he's going to sing on Triplicate already, and given the style he's doing lately, I basically already know what they will sound like when he releases the album. Before i listened to Stardust I pretty much knew exactly what to expect, and I was proven right.

I like the albums and will continue playing them now and then, but I wish I could be looking forward to Bob surprising me again...

I'm really loving some of the posts on this thread. I wish we were all sitting around a big table...

My opinion most closely resembles this:

Alouette wrote:

Christmas in the Heart - is a superb albumShadows - is great & wonderful - (it took me well over a year to appreciate Shadows)Fallen Angels - Love - Melancholy Mood - imho best song on this

Triplicate - really do like alot what I've heard so far

Except that I think the Christmas album has a few too many (really quite) BAD cuts on it. My playlist chops 3-5 and it's a wonderful album that way. I still think Little Drummer Boy is one of his best studio vocals since the 1970's. It's ok to disagree, but you will be wrong and will never change my mind. I also "love" Melancholy Mood - it's one of my favorite songs of this whole period, the way he sings it I could believe he wrote it.I wasn't too excited by news of Fallen Angels, though, and Triplicate brings the knowledge that, yes, we pretty much know what we're getting, combined with one of the worst titles in Dylan's career and worst typefonts in the history of marketing. Like most of his fans and followers I'd like him to hit a grandslam and this seems an extremely unlikely outcome...but the songs previewed do sound pretty good.

CITH - ravaged vocals and all, I love it. Play it every holiday season. Apart from being a Standards/Cover album, don't see much in relation to these others.Shadows - Haven't listened to it in a while, but it's a good "theme" record, but perhaps a little too one dimensional.FA - He seemed to go the other way with this one, with it's main issue not having a consisten theme. Can't please everyone I guess. I enjoyed it, but it's relatively forgettable.Triplicate - will be more of the same I'm assuming.

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